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Spirituality
Fitting In
When a hero falls from grace, there’s no one left to trust.
Posted February 6, 2020 Reviewed by Chloe Williams
Note: This story from James B, excerpted from our book, The Craving Brain: Science, Spirituality, and the Road to Recovery, illustrates the role that unmet emotional needs and trauma can play in the development of addiction.
It began like any other Sunday morning. I was 17 and sitting on a podium at the front of a church, dressed in the white robe of an acolyte. My head hurt, and I couldn’t wait for the sermon to end.
The previous night I had been out partying. A group of seniors who were athletes had invited me to join them at a house where the parents were out of town. We had spent the evening drinking beer and wine coolers. It felt like an initiation into manhood, and after five or six beers I was on top of the world. My talent for sports had opened the door to the coolest group in school, and the next party was only a weekend away.
I looked out over the small congregation. They had been like a family to me for years. I had first come to the church as a lost and insecure kid on a spiritual quest to find the peace and acceptance that I didn’t feel at home. At the time, my father was struggling with drug addiction, and neither of my parents was interested in church. The parishioners had welcomed me—an 11-year-old on his own—with open arms. They had even asked me to be an acolyte, and for the first time in my life, I felt part of something bigger than myself.
I had also developed a father-son relationship with the minister. My connection with my own father had been complicated by his preoccupation with cocaine and marijuana. He was clean now, but his past still haunted our time together. The minister had stepped into this vacuum. He was a smart, handsome, and charismatic man, and I wanted to be just like him.
The minister and I met once a week to talk about school and my spiritual life. From time to time, he asked me about my home life. When I told him that everything was fine, I could see that he was relieved not to take it further. Like everyone else in the church, he seemed like a person with a happy life, and I wanted my life to be happy, too.
During high school, because I played basketball and was a starting forward on the soccer team, I was accepted into the community of athletes. Most of them were older than me, and membership in this select circle made me one of the popular kids—something I had yearned for since elementary school. Since I was good at science, a teacher invited me to join the math team, and I started winning competitions. Suddenly, it was cool to be intelligent, and my dreams expanded. If playing professional soccer didn’t work out, I would be an astronaut or an aerospace engineer.
In my sophomore year, my mother sat me down in the living room to tell me that she was divorcing my father. I shrugged my shoulders, but I was in such a haze of grief that I walked out the door and wrecked my car. A few months later, my minister was fired for carrying on affairs with married women in the church. Once again, I acted like I didn’t care, but the news hit me like a kick in the gut. When he never called to explain himself or say good-bye, I felt even more betrayed. My entire religious experience began to feel like a childish illusion.
Now as the interim minister droned on, I thought of my friends. With everything falling apart, I was lucky to have them. In fact, my popularity was soaring. I had learned how to make fake IDs, I could drink more than anyone else, and I was a good student and athlete. What could be better than that?
My drinking was admittedly sometimes excessive. I had even been picked up by the police for vandalism and public intoxication. But—more luck—my father knew the police chief, and everyone in town knew that I was an athlete. With a rueful smile, an apology, and the promise to do better, I could get out of anything.
There were moments when the distance between my private and public selves seemed unbearable. When I wasn’t partying, there was a knot in my stomach, and I often felt a deep sadness. I knew that by continuing to serve as an acolyte, I was becoming a religious hypocrite—like the minister I despised. Worst of all was the guilt I felt for turning my back on my old friends from middle school. My mother worked with special-needs children, and I had grown up seeing myself as the protector of outcasts and kids who were bullied. Now because I was cool and they weren’t, I had left them behind.
My thoughts were interrupted by the minister, who was signaling for help with the Communion rite. As always, we gave each other bread and wine before serving the congregation. One sip from the chalice made my head reel, a sign that there was still a lot of alcohol in my bloodstream. When the last parishioner left the altar, the minister and I finished off the leftover wine. As a symbol of the blood of Jesus, it was too sacred to pour down the drain. My buzz from the previous night came rushing back and swept away my painful thoughts. It seemed like a long time since I had felt so good.
I carried the cross down the aisle, feeling excited and guilty and just a little sad. My two worlds had come together—I was drunk in church. The community that had been my spiritual safe haven had lost its innocence, and so had I. There was no going back, but luckily I had found another way to feel not just good, but great.
I walked out the door and into a world empty of illusions and heroes. There was no one to trust but myself. From now on, I told myself, I will be the only person who really knows me. I am completely free. I can make my life exactly what I want it to be.
